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Health and the People in Britain, c1000 to the Present Day

The development of Germ Theory and its impact on the treatment of disease in Britain

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 2 section A

Overview

Spontaneous generation, Pasteur's proof of 1861 and pasteurisation, why treatment did not change at once, Koch's microbes and methods, the chicken cholera accident and Pasteur's vaccines, Ehrlich's magic bullet and Salvarsan 606, and patent medicines.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Key term

Why did germ theory not change medical treatment straight away?

Numbers

Which vaccines did Pasteur go on to produce in the 1880s?

Key term

What did Paul Ehrlich mean by a magic bullet?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What was the theory of spontaneous generation?

    Model answer

    The belief that the microbes found in rotting matter and in sick people were produced by the decay itself rather than being its cause.

  2. 2

    What did Pasteur prove in 1861?

    Model answer

    That decay and souring are caused by microbes carried in the air, which he showed with flasks of sterilised broth whose long curved necks trapped the germs before they could reach it.

  3. 3

    What is pasteurisation?

    Model answer

    Heating a liquid such as milk or wine just enough to kill the microbes in it without spoiling it, so that it keeps far longer.

  4. 4

    Why did germ theory not change medical treatment straight away?

    Model answer

    Pasteur had shown that germs cause decay but not yet that one particular microbe causes one particular human illness, so most doctors saw no reason to change what they did.

  5. 5

    What did Robert Koch do that Pasteur had not?

    Model answer

    He identified the individual microbe behind a named disease, isolating the anthrax bacterium in 1876 and later those responsible for tuberculosis in 1882 and for cholera in 1883.

  6. 6

    Which techniques allowed Koch and his team to hunt down microbes?

    Model answer

    Growing them on solid dishes of agar so that single colonies could be separated, staining them with dyes so they showed up under the microscope, and photographing what he found.

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